So, how hard is it to learn Chinese?
Like some of you I read the Letters to the Editor in my local fishwrap. Mostly in this neo-conservative part of California in which I live the letters usually contain some attack on President Obama, Liberals, the unemployed or someone climbs onto their soapbox to let the rest of us know just how creul they really are. But every once in a while there comes a letter which strikes a chord with everyone, and gives forth an opinion that no one – Democrat, Republican or Teabagger – can argue against.
Such a letter was written by Joan Manning of Shasta Lake this past Sunday, and I re-print it here as follows:
Rank classism grips America
This country is in the grip of classism. Classists are the rich and powerful who neither know nor care how their decisions affect the rest of us. They imagine their wealth and position to be the result of their virtuous and industrious lives, and look down on those who are struggling as being deficient in discipline and moral character, who have only themselves to blame for their condition. Classism, like racism and sexism, thrives on ignorance and stereotypes.
Consider what is happening now. Jobs are scarce and pay is low. Long-time workers are laid off, then rehired as contractors with lower wages, no overtime and no benefits. New hires get half the customary pay. Unions are weak and in danger of expiring. When jobs are shipped to China, American workers are told they have priced themselves out of the labor market, assuming Americans could live on Chinese pay. At the same time we are expected to save for our old age, because the classists mean to destroy Social Security.
In fact, they have waited for decades for the chance to eliminate every labor union and every social program ever signed into law.
For every job sent overseas there are wages that will not be spent here, nor will the usual payroll taxes replenish Social Security or the funds meant to help injured or unemployed workers in this country. What the classists save in wages will not, of course, reduce the price of the products they sell, but will go as profit to the CEOs and the stockholders. Will the CEOs pay their fair share of tax on what used to be our wages? Of course not. They have construed the tax laws in their favor, and will, if they get the chance, reduce their taxes even more.
This is classism in its most vengeful form. It is raw contempt for working people and worse for those who can’t work. It is hatred of the kind that decimated the American Indians. It is cruelty of the sort that defended slavery. It comes from a degree of wealth, power and entitlement that borders on royalty. It reeks of what Keith Olbermann calls “a sneering indifference to democracy.”
This is classism as it is presently being practiced in America today. Ignore it at your peril.
I actually expected the neo-conservatives to rip this letter and its writer apart both in print and on the online forum boards. But something strange has happened – they haven’t!!! They have not said one unkind word to her or even attempted to denegrate what she wrote.
The sad fact for them is…they can’t!!!
They are unable to say one word about what she wrote and try to portray her as some sort of partisan Liberal bleading-heart do-gooder who hates this country and wants to install Socialism and kick God out of the country while providing abortion and birth coltrol at the local Wal-Mart for free to anyone who want it. No, they are unable to portray her as such because her missive was skillfully written, and most importantly – non-partisan. It went after all of those who practice classism and didn’t differenciate between political parties or even political ideals.
Now I know that here on this blog I have been guilty of being partisan myself. I usually will bash Republicans and their Tea-Partying brethran for their attitudes about the unemployed, undeemployed and underutilized workers in this country. The truth is that the right is where most of that scorn is coming from. However I have also taken some Democrats to task if I feel that they are not being entirely fair in their assesment of current events. To that end I try to be an equal-opportunity commentator, although there are times when it is difficult to do so.
That said I must congratulate Ms. Manning for putting her finger right on the pulse of what the true underlying problem in this country seems to be right now. It’s not about politics or whose more patriotic or who got the loudest voice, the biggest gun r the most rights to do and say what to and about whom in this country. The problem is that those who have in this supposedly “Christian nation” are looking down upon those who have not, and in some cases trying to prevent the rest of us from “pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps” by making sure we are denied a chance to support our families.
And that is what we have to start saying from now on. Not “I can’t get a job” or “I can’t get work” or even that “there are no jobs out there”. Now we have to be honest with people when asked why we still don’t have a job and tellthem that we keep being denied work, or that we can’t understand why we are still being denied work. That is the key – it’s not that we don’t want to work or that we are too lazy to go out and get it – it is that we are being denied work in order to keep their costs down, profits up, and make it appear that they have the moral high ground in the political theatre.
Well I’ve got news for the so-called “upper class” of this country – you can’t even come close to that alleged “moral high-ground” until you actually create jobs in this country and put its citizens to work instead of sending jobs to China, India and Brazil so that you can avoid paying a minimum wage. As long as the unemployment numbers are the way they are and you do not lift a finger to improve the situation like you claim you are better suited to do instead of the Government, you willfully surrender your “moral high-ground” to those of us that you have turned your backs upon and designated to be “unpersons”.
It looks as if “Big Brother is watching us” allright, only this Big Brother sits in the boardrooms of high commerce, not in the halls of Congress.
Rest assured that those of us who are “eating cake” while you dine on Duck under glass will be watching and waiting for your comeuppance. It might not take the form of a guilotine in the literal sense, but I believe that an economic guilotine may soon be forthcoming. If I were you I would not be surprised if we decide to just let you fail rather than bail you out like we did the banks. We bailed them out and look what it got us – nothing, no jobs, no “working with homeoners to save their houses”, nothing but screwed with our pants on. We learned our lesson. Never again.
But I’ve gotten off track here, haven’t I? Yeah…
Anyway…I have to say that Ms. Manning hit the nail on the head and said what needed to be said. Even if some of us who write on blogs like this totally missed out on it ourselves.
Bravo Ms. Manning, bravo.
Until next time…
